The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars

Winner of the Cundill History Prize 

The House of the Dead tells the incredible hundred-year-long story of “the vast prison without a roof” that was Russia’s Siberian penal colony. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the Russian Revolution, the tsars exiled more than a million prisoners and their families east. Here Daniel Beer illuminates both the brutal realities of this inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it. Siberia was intended to serve not only as a dumping ground for criminals and political dissidents, but also as new settlements. The system failed on both fronts: it peopled Siberia with an army of destitute and desperate vagabonds who visited a plague of crime on the indigenous population, and transformed the region into a virtual laboratory of revolution. A masterly and original work of nonfiction, The House of the Dead is the history of a failed social experiment and an examination of Siberia’s decisive influence on the political forces of the modern world.

About the Author :
Daniel Beer is a Reader in the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has written widely on nineteenth-century Russia and is the author of Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880–1930.

Review :
Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize, and the Longman-History Today Book Prize
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

“Masterly. . . . Many of [Russia’s] modern pathologies can be traced back to this grand tsarist experiment—to its tensions, its traumas and its abject failures.” —The Economist

“[Beer] has mined an impressive trove of resources. . . . From these rich lodes emerges a history with the sort of granular details . . . that make the terror of the ‘very name “Siberia”’ so vividly, so luridly clear.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Impeccably researched, beautifully written.” —The Guardian
 
“Beer’s excellent book will for some time be the definitive work in English on this enormous topic.” —The Wall Street Journal

“It is hard to imagine the hell of Siberia’s penal colonies under the tsars. This history paints a vivid and grisly picture. . . . An absolutely fascinating book, rich in fact and anecdote.” —The Times (London)
 
“Enough to make one blush with shame for the human race. . . . Beer’s writing is clear, his judgments careful and restrained.” —The Christian Science Monitor
 
“A superb history of the exile system. . . . Though [Beer] is an impressively calm and sober narrator, the injustices and atrocities pile up on every page.” —The Sunday Times (London)
 
“Beer gracefully brings to life the immensely rich and tragic history of Siberia since the territory’s colonization began. . . . In this lush mosaic laced together with fluent prose, [he] profiles prisoners of all sorts, narrating their ordeals and the stomach-turning punishments they endured.” —Foreign Affairs